1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a community-based collaborative knowledge system used in a knowledge management system, and a message subscription type setting method and reply message processing method in that system and, more particularly, to a community-based collaborative knowledge system that supports knowledge accumulation using a virtual community in which many unspecified users participate, and a message subscription type setting method and reply message processing method in that system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, an increasing number of enterprises are introducing groupware which can be used to share information among a plurality of users. As typical groupware, an e-mail system, workflow system, and the like are known. Recently, a knowledge management system used to support knowledge and information sharing is beginning to be developed.
The knowledge management system accumulates and manages individual know-how as a knowledge database in addition to Web information and digital file information, and allows to efficiently use knowledge and information when it is combined with a search function (e.g., natural language search).
For such knowledge management system, how to collect and accumulate knowledge such as individual know-how is an important issue. Since knowledge such as individual know-how is so-called tacit knowledge, and does not have any predetermined format unlike Web information and digital file information, it is difficult to automatically collect and accumulate such knowledge.
Hence, the development of a knowledge management system having a community-based collaborative knowledge function is required recently. By implementing a mechanism for automatically collecting and accumulating knowledge such as individual know-how, tacit knowledge can be exploited like explicit knowledge such as Web information and digital file information.
However, since the conventional knowledge management system has a standardized user interface for utilizing collected and accumulated knowledge, some users are forced to utilize collected and accumulated knowledge via such interface in place of their favorite interfaces.
Upon collecting and accumulating information exchanged by an e-mail system as knowledge, it is effective to embed control information in a message header so as to efficiently categorize and accumulate the collected knowledge. However, some mailers that the users may use cannot recognize and miss the intentionally embedded control information.